Castlemilk start to build for the fu­ture

Castlemilk Parish Church are set to start work on their new build­ing - and they’re look­ing for lo­cals to give them a help­ing hand.

The church will be us­ing wood from the old Castlemilk West and East churches to cre­ate new things for the church, with the aim for work to be com­pleted by sum­mer 2016.

The Rev Sarah Brown said: “We’re tak­ing the pews from the old build­ing and us­ing them for items in the new one.

“It’s quite im­por­tant to have that con­nec­tion to the old churches, and through us­ing the pews we should be able to do that.

“We’re look­ing for vol­un­teers, ei­ther with pre­vi­ous wood­work ex­pe­ri­ence or not, who could help us out.”

The church are hop­ing that peo­ple who might have been out of work for a while, or who are look­ing for some com­pany, will come along to the work­shop ses­sions and get in­volved.

There are all sorts of jobs the church are look­ing to do, so peo­ple will be wel­comed no mat­ter their skill level.

Castlemilk East and West churches be­came a union back in 2012.

There’s a long- term vi­sion in mind for the group, too.

“The pro­ject should carry on for at least three years, even af­ter the new build­ing is com­pleted, and even­tu­ally be­come com­pletely self-suf­fi­cient

“There’s been a lot of change in the past few years, so this is now the big push for the fu­ture.

“We want the church to be­long to the whole com­mu­nity, not just the con­gre­ga­tion, and hope­fully vol­un­teers can help us cre­ate a new space, and share own­er­ship of it that way.”

The church has also had other projects on the go re­cently, with their po­lar ex­plor­ers club prov­ing a hit - and also show­ing off some cre­ative skills of church mem­bers af­ter they built a igloo out of empty milk car­tons!

And they’ve been help­ing reach out to the com­mu­nity in other ways, too.

Sarah added: “There’s an arts pro­ject that we’ve been do­ing. We’ve been tak­ing an i-pad and vis­it­ing peo­ple who maybe can’t get out and about as much now, or who can’t get up and down stairs that easily .

“We ask them their favourite hymn, which we will then sing in church, while they sing along at home.

“It’s another way of keep­ing in­volved with the com­mu­nity.”

Any­one in­ter­ested in get­ting in­volved with mak­ing new things for the church can con­tact them on 0141 237 690 or by email­ing at castlemilk­car­pen­ter­swork­shop@ gmail.com

The ses­sions will take place on Tues­day, Wed­nes­day and Thurs­day, and the wood­work pro­ject - also known as Castlemilk Car­pen­ter’s Work­shop - will be meet­ing at Unit E6 at the Glen­wood Busi­ness Cen­tre, just be­hind the swimming pool.

It’s im­por­tant to have a con­nec­tion to the old churches, and we should be able to do that

Pew and Cry John El­der and Rev Sarah Brown launch the new ini­tia­tive